Katherine Doyle and Tom Freeman, a heterosexual couple from Britain who are seeking to legally recognize gay marriage in their country through the Equal Love campaign, were refused a permit for a civil partnership today. Currently, civil partnerships are only available to same-sex couples in the United Kingdom.
“We want to secure official status for our relationship in a way that supports the call for complete equality and is free of the negative, sexist connotations of marriage,” Freeman told Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
“The ‘separate but equal’ system, which segregates couples according to their sexuality is not equal at all. All loving couples should have access to the same institutions, regardless of sexuality. There should be parity of access,” Freeman said.
According to Equal Love’s website, the campaign aims to “challenge the twin bans on gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships, with eight couples filing applications at register offices and then, when they are refused, bringing a joint legal action in the courts to secure a change in the law.”
